The Advice to Pursue Your Passion: What Does “Passion” Even Mean?

advice to pursue your passion
Photo credit: pirate_renee via Visual Hunt / CC BY-ND

Here’s a word I have eliminated as fully as possible from my information and advice lexicon for writers: passion.

Endless books and courses advise people on how to turn their passion into a full-time career, and I meet many writers who say they are (finally) returning to their “passion for writing” after long careers in business, finance, real estate, law, and other occupations commonly chosen for financial stability. Yet, at the same time, such writers ask for an evaluation on whether it’s worthwhile for them to continue pursuing this passion. They seek some external validation that they’re not wasting their time.

Is that properly termed passion?

I’ve also met many who seemed unable to do anything but write, to the detriment of their health, families, and/or long-term financial stability. They make bad decisions for little in return, in the name of becoming a writer or being recognized as one. Such people I can’t discourage.

Is that properly termed passion?

There are also people who show up at the desk every day and treat their writing like a profession, who are willing to bend their work to the market, to be entrepreneurial and ensure that they earn a certain dollar amount per hour.

Is that properly termed passion?

In Zen, students are given koans—a puzzle or a problem to solve—that’s meant to bring awareness, or literally wake you up to the true nature of life. You’ve probably heard a koan even if you don’t recognize the word. A popular koan: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

A koan of my own, that’s been on my mind for the last decade: “What is passion?” And also: “What is my passion?”

I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t have a passion. As someone who has probably listened to too much Alan Watts, I wasn’t surprised by the answer, maybe because Watts encourages you to peel back every layer you have to find yourself, to help you realize that there’s no “there” there—the Buddhist belief that there is no self to find.

This is partly why I avoid the word “passion.” It is an excellent way to stoke someone’s anxiety: What if I’m not pursuing my passion? Shouldn’t I be? But is this really my passion? What if I fail at my passion?

And in the current cultural moment, the word has become ever more fraught—it’s tinged with a value judgment, that there’s something wrong if you haven’t discovered your passion and found the way to make it into your career. The capitalist pursuit of passion is the new horrible form of enlightenment we’re told to chase.

You don’t have to be Buddhist to take a page out of its book and set this particular anxiety aside. If you don’t have a passion, you may be closer to the truth of who and what you are than anyone else.

Yet I have always felt rather boring when faced with the quintessential questions from an interviewer that look for the origin story, e.g.: When did you know you were a writer? Or did you always want to work in publishing?

The truth is: I have no idea. Patterns emerged. Circumstances and serendipity dictated a lot of early life. I recognized and built on my strengths. When I failed, the failure wasn’t as important as the next steps I took.

Forget about passion; go for self-awareness instead. Ask:

  • What are you avoiding? (There’s a reason, and don’t feel guilty about it.)
  • What activities or interactions do you most look forward to, anticipate, and hope for more of?
  • What activities or interactions do you value or prioritize on a daily basis?
  • What activities can you get lost in? (Time stops; you’re in the flow.)

These questions have paved my way to a happier or more satisfying life.

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Linda Apple

This is an interesting article and very timely for me personally. I’m speaking at a conference and while preparing I used the word “passion” and stopped cold. I guess, without realizing it, I was asking myself the same thing. In meditating on “self-awareness” I will understand a better way to explain why we do what we do. Thanks Jane!

Delaney Green

Once again, you use sound reasoning, humor, and examples to make perfect sense. (“…the failure wasn’t as important as the next steps I took.”) I haven’t ever complimented you or your posts, although I have appreciated them. So now, finally, I am saying GOOD ON YA, thank you, and don’t stop now.

Rhonda Lane

Those self-awareness questions are great. They’re applicable to everyone and should be considered periodically throughout one’s life. So, thank you, Jane. Still, my greatest fear (aside from fire, terminal cancer, and Alzheimer’s) is that I’ve sequestered myself behind Door #1: The Self-Destructive Can’t Do Anything Else door. Yet, I see that my life, skill stack, and paths to Into The Zone have all led to me being a writer in these interesting times. Thanks again. Really. I’m sharing your post with my coaching group.

Walt Socha

Thanks for a great post. And one that jump-starts mental musings…

I must recommend “The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human 1st Edition” by Jonathan Gottschall.

In it, the author theorizes that human being developed stories as a way of understanding the sensory input around them and thus as a way to survive (if one didn’t make up a story about that flash of tan in the African savanna, then one simply became the lion’s next meal. And didn’t propagate).

The author stopped at stories being part of our evolution.

I extrapolated: if stories are what we generate to understand the sensory information of the world around us, then how do we interpret the “story” itself? I theorize that we make up a story to describe our stories. And that story (which describes our stories) is our personality!

So Ms. Friedman’s reference to Buddhist thought with regard to passion really cuts the definition of human. What are the stories we generate to describe ourselves. And can we recognize them and change our story-generating-thoughts to better fit into what we do and how we respond to the world around us.

Thanks for allowing me to ramble!

—walt

PS…I do wonder what Mr. Alan Watts would think (“make up a story”) about this?

jeff lyons

This is the only thing I think I’ve ever read of yours that I flatout disagree. 🙂 Passion (IMO) is a part of self-awareness. You can’t “find it” unless you are self-aware to some degree. Passion isn’t the dictionary definition sound-bite, or some fortune-cookie platitude, it is a complex set of components that when you see/feel them you are in it… i.e. you are passionate. I think your sentiment is a good one, but the conclusion to drop passion … not so much. Can you write without passion? Of course. Lots of writers do, and they are all pretty self-aware (for the most part). But I think the ones that really move us are the passionate ones, the crazy ones, the ones on fire. I said that passion is made up of components … I don’t remember them off the top of my head, but I’m looking. When I find them I’ll post separately so you can see what I’m talking about. 🙂 Maybe I’ll change your mind?

Deborah Lucas

Jane, I think you have a valid point about how one word can become so overused that it loses its meaning. I like your zen approach. Frantically finding passion doesn’t ring true to me. I think that’s a way to miss it. Using introspection to discover what we avoid and understanding why, then moving toward what brings us joy. It can be as simple as doing something we enjoy doing, and recognizing our enthusiasm for it.

I’m developing a daily ritual that will center me, to prepare me for a productive day, approaching it not with fear but with enthusiasm, like what @Chase Jarvis talks about on his YouTube channel: Getting in the right frame of mind, or “Taking Charge of Your Own Psychology.

Good conversation. Thanks.

Barry Knister

Thanks for your useful debunking of an overused word. “What do you get lost in?” makes more sense. For me, this idea is associated with periods when awareness of time passing is suspended. I must be time-obsessed, because on those occasions when I “come to” and realize a good chunk of time has passed since I last noticed, the effect is exhilarating.

John Grabowski

GREAT article.

Anne R. Allen

I agree that the word is so overused it has no meaning. I’ve stopped following people on Twitter who use it, because it’s almost always followed by a stream of hashtagged meaningless business jargon. “Passionate about #growthhacks #tigerteam #paradigmshifts #corecompetency.”

I like your suggestion to ask instead “what do you get lost in?”